Precise: Estimate::Obsessed:Rational

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Precise is to Estimate as Obsessed is to Rational.?! Hmm. Maybe, on maintenance anyway.

When I look at the top rack of my dishwasher I used to be able to tell you what my bathroom scale was doing. If my dishwasher was full of measuring cups, measuring spoons, and the top of my food scale, I was losing weight. I was measuring my portions. I was cooking, almost always healthy foods. On the otherhand, if the top rack of my dishwasher had no measuring implements you could almost guarantee I was not doing well on the big scale, either.

It may be different now, as I am learning maintenance. Estimates may be acceptable, may even be preferable. I am pretty good at it now. I pour a bowl of cereal and think, well, I should measure it, and it turns out to be exactly one cup!! Weighing and measuring everything seems kind of obsessive. Estimating may simply be a more rational approach for the long run. So I may just back off of weighing and measuring so much. Maybe just my teaspoon measure for oil, because it is so calorie dense.

If the bathroom scale goes up, though, the food scale and friends will come back out!

I am not much good at estimating so I will stick with the cup and weigh scale, but do have to guess when at a restaurant, but I rarely eat out so shouldn't be a big problem. I plan on staying with tracking mainly because I struggle to get enough carbs and fat, and usually end up too low on them in a day, so have to add something extra. All the best with maintenance!

You have described the correlation between the top rack in my dishwasher and my success. I am not at maintenance, but I do hope that by the time I get there I would have a pretty good idea what my servings are on things is normally eat.

This is something for me to file away for future reference when it get there.

Thanks for being a role model for those of us still struggling (sometimes) to get there.

I LOVE your observations Marsha. You should write short stories or novels! (Perhaps you do!)

You blog has helped me a lot today. I have felt that I'm still too obsessive about all of this because I still track very day. My own analogy of using trackers as sensory supports like reading glasses or hearing aids moved me forward a bit. Your blog has now helped me edge a bit further forward as I realise that I have progressed from measuring portions to estimating - except for oil!!

As an all or nothing person - like you I think - I'm trying to move to middle ground so that not doing it all doesn't mean total relapse.

Actually, I think we're so far down the road this time and have such a strong support network that I don't think that we, or any of our mutual friends, will go back to our bad old ways.

Hi Marsha, I have been on maintenance over 2 years now. For the most part I do not use the scale or cups. In items that I use or eat quite often, I think I am pretty accurate in using my sight. However, If I am trying something new that I am not familiar with, I will measure it. The one thing that I will not stop is tracking everything I eat. Like you, I feel once a person reaches maintenance, that we should be experienced at measuring.What I like is the brilliant way you present a topic but most of all the way that you can motivate others.

I agree with estimating (and folks call me anal retentive...)To tell you the truth, I've been estimating all along. If I couldn't find the food in the nutrition tracker, I just used one close - seems to work, particularly with Spark's rule of thumb portion sizes.